Niche construction, social cognition, and language: hypothesizing the human as the production of place

Abstract

New data is emerging from evolutionary anthropology and the neuroscience of social cognition on our species-specific hyper-cooperation (HC). This paper attempts an integration of third-person archaeological and second-person, neuroscientific perspectives on the structure of HC, through a post-Ricoeurian development in hermeneutical phenomenology. We argue for the relatively late evolution of advanced linguistic consciousness (ALC) (Hiscock in Biological Theory 9:27–41, 2014), as a reflexive system based on the ‘in-between’ or ‘cognitive system’ as reported by Vogeley et al. (in: Interdisziplinäre anthropologie, Heidelberg, Springer, 2014) of face-to-face social cognition, as well as tool use. The possibility of a positive or negative tension between the more recent ALC and the more ancient, pre-thematic, self-organizing ‘in-between’ frames an ‘internal’ niche construction. This indexes the internal structure of HC as ‘convergence’, where complex, engaged, social reasoning in ALC mirrors the cognitive structure of the pre-thematic ‘in-between’, extending the bio-energy of our social cognition, through reflexive amplification, in the production of ‘social place’ as ‘humanized space’. If individual word/phrase acquisition, in contextual actuality, is the distinctive feature of human language (Hurford in European Reviews 12:551–565, 2004), then human language is a hyperbolic, species-wide training in particularized co-location, developing consciousness of a shared world. The humanization of space and production of HC, through co-location, requires the ‘disarming’ of language as a medium of control, and a foregrounding of the materiality of the sign. The production of ‘hyper-place’ as solidarity beyond the face-to-face, typical of world religions, becomes possible where internal niche construction as convergence with the ‘in-between’ (world in us) combines with religious cosmologies reflecting an external ‘cosmic’ niche construction (world outside us).

Politics, Experience, and the Languages of Holiness

“…On this view, the life of Francis of Assisi, for example, that Agamben has written about (Agamben 2013: 111-158), would be a life of holiness as a life well lived, a life of participation in a trans-human order. Now the language of Francis and the Catholic tradition see this in terms of participation in the cosmic order ordained by God and within the Christian economy of salvation, but a contemporary language that seeks an external account might understand this as Francis accessing the power of life itself through the extension of pro-sociality beyond language to the wider environment (Davies 2016). But it is clear that experience of holiness is not something complete in itself that is then inadequately described by the languages available to participants within it, rather language is central to the constitution of the experience of holiness.…”

“…During the last half century, the category of holiness fell into disrepair although there are recent signs of its revitalization with the Pope's apostolic exhortation on holiness, Gaudete et Exultate in April 2018 (Francis 2018), attention being paid to the category in political philosophy (especially Agamben 1995Agamben , 2013, in sociology (Joas 2014), in Jewish studies (Mittleman 2018), and in religious studies (Stausberg 2017).1 This burgeoning interest is arguably linked to the ambient cultural disenchantment in the West along with the philosophical emergence of new kinds of thinking.2 In philosophy (in the analytic tradition) we have discussion about metaphysical and ontological realism (Chalmers et al 2009), a recent phenomenology that wishes to uncover prelinguistic experience (Romano 2015), and speculative materialism (exemplified by the work of Meillassoux 2009) that wishes to move away from modes of conceptualizing world that, in this view, have stymied thought, namely a problematic correlation between mind and world. While I cannot address this here, there is an overlap of intellectual concern with realism that raises questions about the limits of constructivism and anti-essentialism that have dominated the human sciences for almost a century.3 This backdrop is relevant to understanding holiness along with the pressure of scientific developments in expositing the nature of the human in terms of pro-sociality and social neuroscience (Davies 2016;Flood 2019). Inevitably, a contemporary discussion about holiness will need to draw on a number of disciplines and cannot be wholly located within any single discourse; this, I hope, is to succeed in locating the discussion within the discourse of the academic study of religions.4 attention to a number of themes in this history, including Bataille's sacred sociology and remarks about the pre-ethical nature of Otto's holy and his reaction against over-rationalization.…”

“…4 I am drawing on a number of discourses including social constructivism, neuroscience, phenomenology, and philosophy not only because all have a stake in presenting accounts of With these discussions in the background, what I wish to present is an argument that links the category holiness with prepredicative experience, especially as it shows itself through hermeneutical phenomenology, but grounded in what might be termed bio-sociology. But this will not be a reductionist argument because it recognizes the particular languages of holiness, how holiness comes into view through human acts and comportment toward world, and it recognizes the irreducibility of human complexity (see Davies 2016). I hope to present a philosophical justification for linking holiness with prepredicative experience.…”

Prehistoric Perspectives on “Others” and “Strangers”

“…In this context, the emergence of human sociality (Barrett et al, 2012) draws our attention to "social cognition" (SC) which emerges as an important element that influenced the structure, economy and culture of Paleolithic groups (e.g., Davies, 2016). SC constitutes people's subjective interpretations of social situations as well as the concepts and cognitive processes whereby they were shaped (Korman et al, 2015; and see Thompson et al, 2016).…”

“…The human social cognition system reflects the history of the genus Homo, potentially as far back as Homo erectus (∼1.8 million years ago), during which SC played a major part in constructing the human unique "niche" of adaptation to the external world (Laland et al, 2014;Davies, 2016). It seems to us that from the very beginning humans, "a highly intelligent creature who is tuned to the world's complexity" (Davies, 2016:104), interacted with friends, "others, " "strangers, " and even family, through cultural "tool kits."…”